pdfposter man page

Pdfposter can be used to create a large poster by building it from multple pages and/or printing it on large media. It expects as input a PDF file, normally printing on a single page. The output is again a PDF file, maybe containing multiple pages together building the poster. The input page will be scaled to obtain the desired size.

The program uses a simple but efficient method which is possible with PDF: All new pages share the same data stream of the scaled page. Thus resulting file grows moderatly.

To control its operation, you need to specify either the size of the desired poster or a scale factor for the image:

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Given the poster size, it calculates the required number of sheets to print on, and from that a scale factor to fill these sheets optimally with the input image.

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Given a scale factor, it derives the required number of pages from the input image size, and positions the scaled image centered on this area.

The BOX mentioned above is a specification of horizontal and vertical size. The syntax is as follows (with multipier being specified optionally):

box = [ multiplier ] unit

multiplier = number "x" number

unit = medianame or distancename

Many international media names are recognised by the program, in upper and lower case, and can be shortened to their first few characters, as long as unique. For instance 'A0', 'Let'. Distance names are like 'cm', 'inch', 'ft'.

Medias are typically not quadratic but rectangular, which means width and hight differ. Thus using medianames is a bit tricky:

10x20cm

obviuos: 10 cm x 20 cm (portrait)

20x10cm

same as 10x20cm, since all boxes are rotated to portrait format

Now when using medianames it gets tricky:

1x1a4

same as approx. 21x29cm (21 cm x 29 cm, portrait)

1x2a4

same as approx. 21x58cm (21 cm x 58 cm, portrait)

This are two a4 pages put together at the small side: One portrait page wide and two portrait pages high.

2x1a4

same as approx. 42x29cm, which is rotated to portrait and is the same a 29x42cm (29 cm x 42 cm)

This are two a4 pages put together at the long side: Two portrait pages wide and one portrait page high.

Enlarge an inputfile exactly 4 times, print on the default A4 media, and let pdfposter determine the number of pages required.

pdfposter -m10x10cm -pa0 a4.pdf out.pdf

Just to show how efficient pdfposter is: This will create a file containing 192 pages, but only 15 times as big as the single page. With a4.pdf being a quite empty page, this ratio should be even better for filled pages.